WRB—Aug. 2023 Film Supplement

…and justify the ways of God to Ken

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Washington Review of Books.

[This month’s WRB Film Supplement does not actually justify the ways of God to Ken, but it does contain two essays by me in Movies across the decades, one on Gerwig and one on Nolan. All praise to Barbenheimer. —Steve]

Links:

• In Vulture, Bilge Ebiri interviews Samuel L. Jackson:

  Making movies is less an actor’s medium than a director’s medium. And directors are generally the person on the movie set with the least amount of experience. A lot of times, they don’t know specifically what’s happening. Especially some directors these days—they’re doing frame composition and they forget about the story. In my opinion, the worst thing that happened to movie making is people stopped making movies on film. ’Cause young directors have no idea how much it cost to make a movie. You had to process the film. You had to watch dailies, you had to hope it’s in focus. Sometimes you had rollouts; you had to stop, wait, change. Young directors don’t know anything about any of the things that it takes to make a movie that used to be part of the skill of making it. So they do take, after take, after take, after take, after take, after take, after take.

  But somebody’s got to take care of the words and intentions. I say sometimes I was cursed by making Hollywood films with people like John Frankenheimer and Billy Friedkin, guys who knew what they were doing. And they would say, “If you ever direct, don’t put anything in your movie you don’t want in it because the studio will find that piece of footage and they’ll go in there and they’ll change your shit.” And they’d say, “And with you, don’t do anything you don’t want to see in the movie.” So I learned not to temper my performance but to hold on to specific things that can’t be excised. Because I don’t give you a choice to excise it. It’s me protecting not just me but the character and the integrity of the story the way I saw it when I read it.

  [It was so hard to pick just one quote to pull. You have to read this one. —Steve]

• In The Bulwark, Hannah Long on Midnight Run (1988):

  The romance of the buddy comedy is entangled with the romance of the United States: Perhaps we can all get along in the end. It’s fitting, then, that the film is a love letter to every part of America, from quiet Brooklyn Heights brownstones to glittering Vegas casinos to Chicago suburbs to the red bluffs around Sedona, Arizona. It leans toward the seedy, the unkempt, and the unassuming. Moscone’s Bail Bonds is stuffed to the gills with sheafs of papers and knicknacks. A Rembrandt print gazes gloomily down from the wall. While staying at a small hotel in Globe, Arizona, Grodin made friends with “a grizzled old guy named Danko who was a pallbearer at John Wayne’s funeral.” (This story is, remarkably, very probably true.) Grodin even looped in a laconic local man to play as an extra during the Red’s Corner Bar heist, feeding him lines in between takes and playing it off to the crew as if the old guy was coming up with brilliant ad libs on the spot.

• For The Ringer, Adam Nayman on Talk to Me (2023) and “elevated horror”:

  It’s too bad because the scariest movies—the ones that have most recently truly elevated horror—don’t just lead us down the path or drag us to hell. They make us wonder whether we even want to get to our destination, or whether we’re in safe hands to begin with. Rather than Aster and Jennifer Kent—who employed the Philippous on set a decade ago for her own rookie triumph, The Babadook—the best analogue for the brothers’ aggressive intentions and internet-honed skill set may be Ben Wheatley, whose online shorts in the early 2000s reveled in a similar sense of DIY spontaneity and who proved a quick study in translating the style to film. Wheatley’s 2011 masterpiece, Kill List, was surely derivative—it wore its ’70s folk-horror references on its robed sleeve—but its nastiest shocks seemed to come out of nowhere; they were genuinely blindsiding, and they stayed with you whether you wanted them to or not. Talk to Me holds you in its grip until it’s over, but that’s it. On the strength of pure craft and ambition, the Philippous have earned entry into the elevated-horror club; maybe as they grow and develop as directors, they’ll renounce their membership or even stake out territory beyond—and above—the in crowd.

• In NRO, Armond White on Jacques Rivette:

  Rivette’s nonstop improvisation was graced in technique and quixotic irony. In Love on the Ground (gorgeously shot by William Lubtchansky), Rivette goes beyond realism, imagining the emotional landscape of play-acted characters—Hollywood genre psychoanalyzed. It seems “crazy,” as Rivette’s acolyte André Téchiné pointed out, but this craziness is specific to cinephilia. Each sequence is a fleeting cinematic fantasy, as if modern figures were living in Marcel Carné or Otto Preminger or Stanley Donen movies. The imagination—Rivette’s improvisation—never stops. Yes, it is ludic, as Sight and Sound said; aimlessly playful; light, amusing, even satirical, with no goal except liberating human whimsy. In Haut bas fragile, Nathalie Richard on the nightclub dance floor loses sight of her partner and spins, akimbo, lost in her own revelry, evoking Alain Resnais as well as René Clair. For Rivette, such moments constantly renew fantasy. His films are inordinately long because his stories (his fascination) could go on forever.

  [I have quoted only the good here, but with White you have to take the good with the bad. —Steve]

• In The New Yorker, Inkoo Kang on the numerous ways Hollywood is sabotaging itself:

  After Top Gun: Maverick broke box-office records, sequels may have been seen as the key to luring audiences back to theatres, which have been languishing since the pandemic. But this summer’s long-in-the-tooth franchises—Mission: Impossible, Transformers, Indiana Jones, and The Fast and the Furious—have performed just satisfactorily, if not disappointingly. Barbie, meanwhile, saw the director Greta Gerwig infuse the half-century-old blond blank slate with her own idiosyncratic anxieties to produce a Zeitgeist-capturing film with an unmistakable authorial imprimatur. But Hollywood’s ignoring the obvious takeaway, which is that viewers appreciate novelty. Instead, Mattel has announced that it will follow up Barbie by raiding its toy closet for more I.P., and has put dozens of projects based on its products into development.

  [This is not the WRB Television Supplement, but “In a recent interview, the actor and director Justine Bateman said that network notes now request that shows be less engaging so that distracted audiences won’t lose track of the plot and turn them off.” is one of the bleaker sentences I’ve read. —Steve]

• For The Guardian, Manuela Lazic on the state of film criticism:

  More worrying still, some critics see themselves that way, avoiding ruffling any feathers (internet backlash against unpopular opinions doesn’t help) and instead choosing to generate bloated excitement for any new release. The studios are partly responsible, inundating young, broke writers with extravagant film merchandise that they otherwise could never afford and taking off their mailing lists those who review their films negatively. But the problem runs deeper still: in a climate in which the film industry is already struggling and streamers (yes, them again) have worked hard to make films appear about as worthwhile as a YouTube or a TikTok video, letting you watch thousands of them for a small subscription fee rather than paying the price of a cinema ticket for each one, it is tempting for film lovers to want to promote cinema at all cost. Why discourage more people from going to the movie theatre with an unfavourable review?

  [I tend to put items related to the business of the movies in Critical notes, but I thought it was important to put these last two in the big section. Film is almost always an incredibly expensive art form to produce, especially when compared to, say, the novel. That money has to come from somewhere, and the places it comes from tend to prefer to see a return on investment. To take one very obvious example, some of the better commentary about Barbie (2023) has made this explicit in its discussion—the movie exists as a result of various entities that made it possible, and those entities have goals they hope to accomplish through its release. But, any time we talk about this art form, that fact should be in the back of your mind. Art and commerce will always have an uneasy relationship, and in this art form perhaps most of all.

  And as for criticism: this Supplement and the WRB as a whole exist in part because we feel that the people whose work we link to are doing something good and important and valuable, and we want to bring that work to the attention of you, our readers. We hope you value it as much as we do. Read it, talk about it, subscribe to it—it will only exist if people who love it show that love. And, if you love what we do here at the WRB, please subscribe, and please consider a paid subscription so that we can continue to do what we do. —Steve]

Barbenheimer roundup:

• Micah Mattix
  had a good roundup for Barbie.

  • Not included there but worth your time is Joe Joyce [The funniest person currently working in this space. —Steve]: “Men are so awesome that they are beyond defining themselves via women, needing neither their approval nor conquest to stay rockin’. Yet women are also awesome, and a feminism in reaction to men is just giving men the satisfaction.”

  • And Beatrice Loayza: “Mattel’s leaders turn out to be a team of brainless men in suits, an all-too-expected twist that recalls The Wizard of Oz, another film that indulges our need for escapism while underscoring its shortcomings.”

• Moving to Oppenheimer (2023),

  John Pistelli
  : “Since Oppenheimer is an avowed modernist, we trust him to know that ‘a man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery,’ in this case the discovery of a tension between anarchist and collectivist revolution, between the anarch’s will-to-truth and the uses the collective will-to-power would make of them.”

• Michael Koresky: “In other words, he prefers a viewer with a limited knowledge of history, all the better to wow them with sensation. It’s a disconcerting thought, yet also an honest one about the strange mix of re-education and entertainment that mainstream historical narrative moviemaking represents.”

• John Semley: “One might, charitably, claim that his film’s time-jumping structure reflects the Gita’s notion of time itself as nonlinear. But Nolan’s reshuffling of the story’s chronology seems more born of a showman’s instinct to save his big bang for a climax.”

• And Bilge Ebiri has had a great run of pieces out about Oppenheimer, including interviews with some of the stars and Ludwig Göransson, who did the music. From his interview with Robert Downey Jr.:

  Oftentimes Chris would just come in and say, “Robert, great. Now next time just do nothing.” I was like, “Nothing? Okay!” And sometimes that was the one he’d print. Sometimes he liked what happened in the takes before or after that. There was just this ongoing dialogue between a master filmmaker and someone who is open to a new experience. Sometimes—and I’m sure we can all relate to this—by the time you’re looking at the back nine, you’re in your mid- to late 50s, you’re wondering, How many more new experiences am I likely to have? And this was exactly that in practical terms, while still having all the fundamentals of making a film that you’re proud of.

Other reviews:

• In Orion, Liliana Maria Percy Ruíz reviews Pan’s Labyrinth (2006):

  It is remarkable to see a child act with such conviction and courage, especially when faced with the real possibility of dying a horrific death, both in Spain and in the underworld. The captain is not only a murderer, he relishes in violence and cruelty, taking advantage of both whenever possible. For Ofelia to stand up to him is not only an act of disobedience but of bravery, the kind that you often only see male action heroes enact on screen.

• In the LARB, Thomas M. Puhr reviews Enys Men (2023):

  But nature cannot be contained, nor its development arrested, as the increasingly dramatic changes to the flowers suggest. “Lichen has appeared on one of the flowers,” the Volunteer documents. “The lichen has grown on the flower.” “The lichen has spread to all of the flowers.” And, finally, “The flowers have gone.” With the Volunteer’s purpose annihilated, so too is she extinguished. Disruptions to the pattern reveal the nothingness at the core of her existence, a nothingness exacerbated by the film’s visual and aural absences.

• In the NYRB, A. S. Hamrah reviews Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023):

  One of the most admirable lines in the movie comes after Atwell’s character asks Cruise and his team why they are willing to help her, since they don’t even know her. “What difference does that make?” he asks, a fading echo of Hawksian professionalism and humanism in this globalized landscape, part of this film series’ (and Cruise’s) anti-psychological approach, where backstory always struggles to be buried and forgotten, and usually is. It’s the opposite of the maudlin nonsense about family in the Fast & Furious movies.

N.B.:

• A breakdown of the suits in Oppenheimer. [Not mentioned here (Nolan and Murphy have mentioned it elsewhere), but: “The return of the Thin White Duke / Throwing darts in lovers’ eyes”. Fascinating decision to link Oppenheimer in appearance with Bowie’s occultist and fascist-curious phase. —Steve]

• The city and suburbia in film. [Connecticut is hell, and so on. —Steve]

• This is the silliest spin about the writers’ and actors’ strike I’ve seen yet.

• An update on Turner Classic Movies.

• Metrograph is selling a Summer of Rohmer t-shirt. [WAS. They WERE selling. —Chris]

• Paul Reubens, creator of Pee-wee Herman, died August 30. R.I.P.

• William Friedkin, director of The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), died today. R.I.P.

Currently in theaters:

[Since every WRB Film Supplement is someone’s first: the movies are listed in approximate order of how good I think they are. Steve’s larks are the ones I recommend you go see. —Steve]

Steve’s larks:

Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig, July 21):

See Movies across the decades below for more on Greta Gerwig.

Oppenheimer (dir. Christopher Nolan, July 21):

See Movies across the decades below for more on Christopher Nolan.

Shortcomings (dir. Randall Park, August 4):

[I almost certainly like this movie more than I should because the main character, Ben, is an extremely judgmental “film guy” (we will set aside for now questions about what terms like “film bro” actually mean in 2023) who loves histrionics and Éric Rohmer. Also, people keep saying his type is blondes and he doesn’t understand why. —Steve]

In the same way that the novel is an art form suited to depicting the economic and social life of the bourgeoisie, film is suited to the depiction of a Type of Guy. Really, this is a coming of age movie except that Ben is in his mid-20s and needs to finally come to terms with the fact that the world does not revolve around him. [I laughed really hard at the shot early on of Ben’s Criterion Collection DVD of Frances Ha (2012). Incredible touch. —Steve] If anything, the movie struggles slightly because Ben is so terrible at the beginning that it’s not clear why people keep extending him the wide latitude they do, and so Ben and other characters coming to terms with each other can feel forced. But it understands Ben himself perfectly.

The rest:

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (dir. Christopher McQuarrie, July 12):

Tom Cruise, fresh off being proclaimed King of Cinema by general acclamation, stars in a movie in which AI is intent on destroying everything his character holds dear. Could this be commentary on the state of the movie business? It’s impossible to say! [I can’t believe I’m being forced to take the side of the seventh installment of an OK action franchise here. Congrats, Tom.

As with every other action movie to come out this year, I am sure I would have liked this more if John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) hadn’t been in theaters a few months earlier. Don’t get me wrong, the stunts here are great, and I’m happy Tom Cruise is taking his life in his hands for our entertainment, but there’s a balletic quality to Wick that is, with the exception of the fight in the fenced-in alley, completely lacking here. —Steve]

[I don’t want to re-litigate our fight about John Wick—I will just say what I always say: I would die for Tom Cruise. —Chris]

Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (Rocky and Rani’s Love Story) (dir. Karan Johar, July 28):

[In India studios release family-drama rom-coms that are close to three hours and expect them to be big hits. This does not happen in the United States. Is this because American audiences are uniquely unsophisticated? Discuss. —Steve]

This knows exactly what to do with the classic rom-com formula of having two people with basically nothing in common fall in love—here, they’re made to adapt to each other’s families. Unfortunately once there it devolves far too frequently into obvious and facile commentary about the conflict between his “traditional” and her “progressive” family, and all is resolved by the end. You can feel it pointed out to you what is good and what is bad.

And that’s a shame, because when it avoids that trap it’s great fun. [Even more fun than I think, if the reaction of the mostly Indian audience I saw this with is any indication. There were several jokes that got a massive reaction that I did not understand. —Steve] A lot of it would be goofy and over-the-top but Rocky Randhawa himself is goofy and over-the-top, something Ranveer Singh really sells in his performance, so his love story is too. (Rani’s arc has more to do with the explicit traditional/progressive clash mentioned earlier and so is less compelling.) The musical numbers are all good and neatly follow the rule that they should have their origin in an excess of emotion felt by characters. Maybe it returns a bit too frequently to jokes built on characters with bad English misspeaking or misunderstanding, but Shakespeare liked that kind of thing too.

The Miracle Club (dir. Thaddeus O’Sullivan, July 14):

Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith are not able to salvage this movie, which takes some explosive material and turns it into either pat nonsense about reconciliation or lame jokes about how men are useless without their wives.

Dreamin’ Wild (dir. Bill Pohlad, August 4):

This is a biopic about a songwriter that intends to show that many of his songs have roots in emotions he felt throughout his life. Unfortunately the songs are much better at communicating those emotions than the movie.

Joy Ride (dir. Adele Lim, July 7):

A movie so joyless in its obscenity shouldn’t be so maudlin in its depiction of friendship, but Hollywood is still coming up with new and exciting ideas.

Haunted Mansion (dir. Justin Simien, July 28):

The charms of Owen Wilson as a priest of extremely dubious legitimacy aside, comedy horror is a pretty miserable genre, especially when treacly.

Meg 2: The Trench (dir. Ben Wheatley, August 4):

More interesting as a throwback to a time when Hollywood and China would collaborate than as a movie. [In many of the action scenes the camera moves so wildly that it made me nauseous. This is indicative of the quality of the whole thing. —Steve]

The Lesson (dir. Alice Troughton, July 7):

Some questions this movie may cause you to ask:

• Why does one of the most respected novelists in England need a catchphrase?

• Why is this catchphrase “good writers borrow; great writers steal”?

• Is it supposed to be funny that he’s stolen this from Eliot or whatever the original source actually is?

• Why is it so important that one of the most respected novelists in England have a novel out within two years after his last one?

• Why does a guy with an Oxford first believe that the way to answer “What do you think about Rachmaninoff?” is by listing a bunch of biographical facts?

• Why does the guy know so many biographical facts about Rachmaninoff and yet not have a single opinion about his music?

• Why does a teenager with literary pretensions not know how to pretend to have read books he hasn’t read?

• Why, if all of these people are supposed to be good writers, is every piece of writing shown on screen garbage?

[You may notice that none of these questions concern the plot. This is because the plot is even stupider than the bizarre misunderstandings the movie has about the world of people who occasionally read a book. I have no desire to think about it for a second more. —Steve]

Sound of Freedom (dir. Alejandro Monteverde, July 4):

You can make a movie that takes child sex trafficking seriously. You can also make a movie that uses the imminent rape of a child to heighten the stakes of its climactic sequence. But they can’t be the same movie.

Critical notes:

[Speaking of Sound of Freedom, there is a tendency among some of its boosters to recommend it as an important movie to watch on account of a moral compulsion, operating something like: human trafficking is very bad, the movie makes you feel bad about just how bad it is, therefore there is an obligation to see it. Nic pointed out to me that the classic example, and diagnosis, of this tendency is in the following passage about Marie Antoinette from Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution.

Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like a goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes; as yet mingles not with affairs; heeds not the future; least of all, dreads it. Weber and Campan have pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little Toilette; with a whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on her glance: fair young daughter of Time, what things has Time in store for thee! Like Earth’s brightest Appearance, she moves gracefully, environed with the grandeur of Earth: a reality, and yet a magic vision; for, behold, shall not utter Darkness swallow it! The soft young heart adopts orphans, portions meritorious maids, delights to succour the poor,—such poor as come picturesquely in her way; and sets the fashion of doing it; for as was said, Benevolence has now begun reigning. 

—Steve]

Movies across the decades:

[Spoilers of Barbie, Oppenheimer, and other movies not released last month below. —Steve]